The Axiom listening tests are set up by an Axiom technician (Debbie, for those who met her at the 30th Anniversary), not by Ian, nor Andrew Welker, nor myself. Strict protocol and statiscal analysis are employed, as they were for years at the National Research Council.

We keep a variety of different brands of speakers on hand, so anyone participating cannot assume they are listening to Axiom speakers.

Re. the speaker shuffler. Dr. Toole introduced this in the Harman lab, when he left the NRC, thanks to the enormous financial resources of Harman International. The protocol that was used at the NRC was as follows: Each speaker being tested was rotated through four different locations behind the acoustically transparent curtain; in addition, each member of the listening panel rotated through five different seating locations. After a couple of days, all members had sat in each of the listening seats, and auditioned all the speakers in all of the locations, thus randomizing the room/location variables.

The speaker shuffler is an elegant albeit costly solution. However, the speaker and listener locations can be removed as variables through the time-consuming process outlined above.

And to JBall: I have never stated that there is no speaker that is better than the M80s. I certainly haven't heard all the speakers in the world! And there may be one out there that in double-blind tests I'd choose, or rank higher than the M80s. But I have heard many very good expensive speakers and plenty of equally good modestly priced ones, a large enough sample that I can confidently state that there is no necessary correlation of loudpspeaker sound quality with price.

I'm a happy Axiom owner though a bit taken back by the arrogance displayed on this forum that no speaker can possibly be better, only "similarly good" to our Axioms based on Axiom run blind testing. Amazing!

Well, Alan just answered that HE didn't state such a thing. I was going to add that no one else had either. Where did someone say that there is no better speaker?

The simple point is that more expensive is not automatically better sounding.

Quote:

Wow Axiom should build cars too b/c with this logic, they should be able to make a car perform like a Porsche and cost less than a Camry.

Well, again, you're exaggerating your point, but I'll mention that with Axiom being an internet-direct company, there aren't warehouses and store stock and brick and mortar rents and salespeople's salaries involved so, yes, they CAN represent a very good real-world value in comparison to most other speaker companies. You've got break-even and profit at one level only...not at three or four or five.

You keep making the point that we're all biased towards our Axioms here and close minded to other speakers. That's not the case in this forum at all. Of course, since most here are Axiom owners, we DO like them...or we wouldn't have bought them in the first place.

But you're assumption here that we're all blind fanboys is incorrect and insulting.

Wow Axiom should build cars too b/c with this logic, they should be able to make a car perform like a Porsche and cost less than a Camry. It's amazing that they can slop some drivers in a box costing thousands less than the most elaborate designs and be at worst case similarly good. Amazing!

I don't think you understood what I was saying, or you weren't responding to me. I wasn't using logic, but rather a sense of humor. Maybe I was arrogant in thinking that your unscientific mind could have one, too.

JBall,around 1974 i was living in Europe and i bought an Electrolux vacuum cleaner for the equivalent can. money of around $70.one year later, i was back in Canada and a salesman knocked on my door and wanted to sell me the very same model, for $500.

reasoning like you do here, i should have thought that, in the space of one year, the machine had made a giant leap in quality.

Stop making car analogies. Jeezus christ, everyone stop making car analogies for everything. Macs are not BMWs, Axioms are not Hyundais, a woman isn't a Corvette, and Cheerios are not Lincoln Continentals.

I too stand that analogies are usually worthless, because the two things are not actually analogs of each other.

That said, in the motor industry, at least in the UK, there are "shed" companies that build cars in small quantities and sell directly to the end user. The level of performance from some of these cars surpasses the big name makers, and the cost is much lower.

Here is a measurement of a Revel speaker by the same reviewer. Notice no bumps below 100Hz or above 10kHz. I am pretty sure the bumps in the Axiom are NOT room related since Brent is a credible reviewer that tests products in a similar fashion each time.